Boxguy's Movie Vault

Story: For Christmas each year I give my wife a few movie CDs. Usually they are copies of movies that we liked and saw in the theater during the year. This year I put them in this box and when we wanted to watch a movie, we just opened the box and picked one of these. After we watch the movie, we put it with the others, but it is fun to have these in a special place as a first choice. To be perfectly honest this box was so pretty I just couldn’t bear to sell it. So, it sits on a shelf in our home where I can apprerciate it.

Materials: The top is a lovely piece of curly Hard Maple from a tree in New England. The sides are Macore from West Africa. The corner splines are also maple. Like all my boxes this is finished with three coats of Minwax Wipe On Polyurethane and a coat of Johnson’s Paste Wax applied with OOOO steel wool. The poly is applied with a disposable 1 inch wide foam brush from Hobby Lobby. You don’t get much more basic than this.

Techniques: The finger indent was made with a Jet oscillating spindle sander. I angle the table and sand in the indent after I cut the lid from the bottom. The top is glued and then put in a shop-made press that is basically a top and bottom board with six all-threads and six nuts to squeeze the two boards together. I plan to post a picuture of it in my blog next week. I like the way this applied top lets me show the end grain of the wood and so far I have had no problems with this technique holding up well. Shot #5 is a picture of the back of the box and shows how the hinge looks from that angle. I haven’t included a back shot of any of my boxes before.

Thanks: As always thanks for looking. A special thanks to those of you who have taken time to write comments and suggestions. Your remarks are what really make postings fun for me.